Kahlil Gibran on love

Wherever you are, whatever you are doing, however you feel, remember that it can all happen with you staying friendly with yourself.

My husband was reading Kahlil Gibran last night out loud

“When you love you should not say,
God is in my heart,’ but rather, ‘I am in the heart of God.’
And think not you can direct the course of love, for love, if it finds you worthy, directs your course.
Love has no other desire but to fulfil itself.
But if you love and must needs have desires, let these be your desires:
To melt and be like a running brook that sings its melody to the night.
To know the pain of too much tenderness.
To be wounded by your own understanding of love;
And to bleed willingly and joyfully.
To wake at dawn with a winged heart and to give thanks for another day of loving;
To rest at the noon hour and meditate love’s ectasy;
To return home at eventide with gratitude;
And then to sleep with a prayer for the beloved in your heart and a song of praise upon your lips.”

He wrote this after personal misfortunes – losing his half-brother Butrus, his mother Kamilah, and his sister Sultanah to illness. This man made choices as we see from his poem on love. He shares them with us, I think in part hoping that we too will be a friend to ourselves.

Leave a Reply